This multi-authored book provides a number of masterfully framed windows into the worlds of post-biblical Judaism(s) and Early Christianity(ies) by analyzing the varied, but often overlapping, developments of the concept of paradise. It includes (1) an introduction by Guy G. Stroumsa, (2) thirteen chapters that explore the concept as manifested in Jewish and Christian thought with emphasis on those contemporary with Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism(s) and (3) an epilogue by Alessandro Scafi. This review will highlight a handful of chapters, observe a few shared themes, and offer an appreciative critique of this very fine work.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

For this week's conference in Dayton, both Chris and I are reviewing Dale Allison's chapter in our recently published book. Dale Allison is quite dear to both of us for several reasons and (just a guess) I think that both of our comments will take a very appreciative tone.

I imagine, however, that my review will push back a bit harder than Chris' will. This has nothing to do with our personalities - Chris can push back with the best of them (just ask J.K. Elliott). My bones are with the theme of "disillusionment" (to steal a word from Allison's chapter title) that undermines his confidence in making historical claims about Jesus.

If you'd like a window into the last 25 years of Jesus research and the shifting tendencies that mark this period, Allison's chapter is a must read. His autobiographical reflections in this chapter run deep and cannot be summarized here. But here is an excerpt. He argues

If you've read some of my work on Jesus and memory, you'll know that I concur with Allison's assessment of the frailty of human memory and the necessarily creative elements of memory. But where this becomes a problem for Allison, I do not find myself disillusioned - not in the least. I will not say much more here, but I do not think that "uncertainty" is a cause for concern for the historian. Therefore I am quite optimistic with Allison's suggestion that general impressions of Jesus might yield a great deal of fruit when the Jesus tradition is observed in toto. Dale suggests that episodes in the Jesus tradition that have been judged to be "inauthentic" can contribute to this overall impressionistic portrait of Jesus. For Allison this is a decided step away from nailing down historical facts. I understand historical facts and the ways that they are handled by historians differently.

“Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?”

Robert Miller, Juniata College, Presiding
Robert Miller, Juniata College, Introduction (5 min)
Anthony Le Donne, Lincoln Christian University University of the PacificJesus and the Problem of
Epochal Romanticism (25 min)
Pieter Craffert, University of South AfricaWhat Are Apocalyptic
Gospel Texts Evidence For? (25 min)
James Crossley, University of SheffieldJesus and the World
Turned Upside Down…and Back Again (25 min)
Thomas Kazen, Stockholm School of TheologyApocalypticism as world
view and linguistic metaphor: Attempting a cognitive approach to Jesus’ utopian
language
(25 min)
Stephen Patterson, Willamette University, Respondent (25 min)
Discussion (20 min)I was honored to be invited to present in this themed section. Here is my abstract for this paper:

This essay will situate Wrede, Schweitzer and other early adherents of the “Jesus as Apocalyptic Prophet” thesis within German Romanticism and suggest that this view of history defined much of the vernacular for modern Jesus studies. It will then examine an often overlooked element of the Jesus tradition, what this study will call Jesus’ “greater than” rhetoric. In doing so, the author will (largely) avoid the terms “prophet,” “apocalyptic,” and “eschatological” for heuristic purposes. Thus this essay will explore the possibility of epochal aggrandizement in the Jesus tradition without hinging the notion on the vernacular of Romanticism.I will also be presenting in the other section of the HJ unit... more on that in a later post.-anthony

ACLD: Francis Watson just published three short articles arguing that the "Jesus' Wife" fragment is an amalgam of Coptic phrases taken from Thomas. You might be aware that at least one of these was published on your blog. Is his chosen venue for publication indicative of a shift in media culture for biblical studies? What, in your mind, is lost and gained by the use of electronic and social media for the dissemination of original academic argumentation?

MG: That's a great question. I think we are still finding our way. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we'd had the internet, blogs, social media and the like back in 1960 when Morton Smith announced his discovery of Secret Mark! The greater exposure that the internet gives to finds of this kind enables more pairs of eyes to look at them. And that can be a good thing -- they can provide expert opinion from unexpected sources and they can help in the crystallizing the key questions. On the other hand, it can be a dizzying and confusing business, giving the opportunity for fringe views and rushes to judgement.

So I have mixed feelings. It might well be a generation before we can be sure about the best way, in this blogging and social media age, to handle exciting new discoveries and dramatic new research. Most academics are basically digital immigrants and struggle to come to terms with the different way that things develop on the internet, and they feel uncomfortable about it. What has been fascinating about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife has been the way that it combines both old and new media. The peer-reviewed draft article for HTR and the high quality digital image are what the academics are most interested in, but these were released at the same time as video clips, FAQs and press-releases for journalists, alongside a big TV documentary. And naturally, that kind of invitation to great publicity naturally brings with it an invitation to great scrutiny. It's an invitation that many scholars were happy to accept.

ACLD: Do you think that this new Coptic fragment is a fraud?

If I were a betting man, and I am not, I would probably put a fiver on it. The key point for me, at this early stage in the analysis of the fragment, is that it appears to be dependent on a patchwork of pieces from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Not the Gospel of Thomas (the work) but the one specific Coptic edition of the Gospel of Thomas that we have, in Nag Hammadi Codex II. Now if that judgement is right (and it is provisional), then there are two choices. Either the author of the fragment copied from that specific edition of Coptic Thomas, in Nag Hammadi, before it went into the jar and was buried, in the late fourth century, or he copied from it after it came out of the jar. On balance, it is much more likely that he gained access to Codex II via one of the multiple modern editions than that he gained it in from that one copy before it went into the jar.

Chris wrote about the impact of our conference topic for Church concerns. While Scot McKnight argues that the historical Jesus is of no value for the Christian Church, Chris thinks that this topic is an important one to explore further. Link here.

Anthony embarrassed himself by gushing over the wonderment of historical Jesus scholar, Jens Schroeter here.

ACLD: Your newest book Thomas and the Gospels takes your research in a relatively new direction. When you first stepped into the world of Thomas, did you find that the scholarly conversations about Thomas mirror the debates related the canonical Gospels? Or do these conversations have dramatically different talking points?

MG: Thanks for the plug! Well, the "and" is perhaps the most important word in the title. It's a book about Thomas and the Gospels, attempting to explain why I think that Thomas shows knowledge of the Synoptics. That discussion is related to inter-Synoptic discussions and to related areas like historical Jesus research. One of my worries about the way that some scholars approach Thomas is that they do so in ignorance of Synoptic Problem scholarship, which they mistakenly regard as outdated and unhelpful. What I am trying to do is to bring the eyes of someone familiar with inter-Synoptic relationships to the issue of Thomas's relationship to the Synoptics.

One of my most beloved seminary professors taught me that “you know that an exegetical thesis is worth pursuing when you find that the answer to your question unlocks the meaning of several other texts that are otherwise problematic.” In other words, rather than unlocking the meaning of a particular passage in isolation, the thesis creates a constellation of related meanings throughout the book in question. This is what made William Wrede’s Messianic Secret so influential. In the wake of Strauss’s Leben Jesu, historical critics were looking for a problem to solve and were convinced that it would be solved by parsing out Mark into strata.

Wrede asks two questions to begin his masterpiece: “What do we know of Jesus’ life? and…What do we know of the oldest views and representations of Jesus’ life?” Wrede then rephrases the two-part question like this: “How do we manage to dissect the Gospel tradition in these two directions: how do we separate what belongs properly to Jesus from what is material of the primitive community?” (Wrede, 4).

One can see the premise of his work implicit in these questions: Jesus is a figure obscured by the veneration attached to his name by the earliest Christians. Upon this premise, Wrede noticed that Jesus repeatedly silences such venerations and commands people to tell no one of his great works. Moreover, Jesus’ “messianic identity” is most often revealed to only a small group of disciples until the end of Mark’s Gospel. For Wrede, this odd behavior tied together to form a Markan theme. Mark was attempting to answer the problem of Jesus’ silence concerning his messianic status relative to his public persona. For Wrede, Mark’s agenda to overlay Jesus with secretive intentions created a second stratum with messianic veneration and an apologetic for Jesus’ otherwise humble persona. For Wrede, and countless scholars since Wrede, this made better sense of prohibitions addressed to demons, prohibitions following other miracles, the prohibition following Peter’s confession, and Jesus’ many and varied attempts to retreat from public view.

Neil Godfrey, of Vridar fame, is in process of posting a very entertaining review of Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (related conference less than a week away). Because his cross-hairs are aimed at Professor Keith, I'll refrain from saying much. However, because Chris is uncomfortable with the word "postmodern" and I am quite comfortable with the word, I'll offer this rejoinder. Godfrey summarizes:

"Historical Jesus scholars appear to be on the way to replacing one set of failed tools with a lot of postmodernist mumbo jumbo."

While I will concede his point on the accusation of "mumbo," I must demur from the accusation of "jumbo." So glad we could have this exchange; I think we're all the better for it!

ACLD: In your essay for Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, you talk about the possible heuristic value of the criteria for instructing students new to Gospels scholarship. Will you continue to use the traditional criteria as pedagogical avenues to larger discussions in the classroom?

MG: I think so, yes. I was lucky enough to be taught by E. P. Sanders and his approach to what are now called the criteria was exemplary. He used what he called various "tests" as a means of cross-examining the
source material, and it is an excellent way to train new students. Unfortunately, unlike Sanders, many scholars fail to distinguish between materials of pedagogical value for introductory students who are being trained and materials that scholars should be able to take for granted.

When I teach the "criteria", I introduce them and then illustrate them, discuss them, and point out the problems. I think it's a great way of learning historical method. One is aiming to discover how historians work and this means learning their methods and then exploring them and then critically interacting with them. The critical interaction is essential, but it needs to come at the right moment. Quite often amateurs make the mistake of attempting critical interaction before they have immersed themselves in the methods.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Jesus Blog just reached 10,000 page views. I'm told that this isn't bad for a first month. Thank you for reading, linking, talking about us at the water cooler. We would ask, however, for James McGrath to stop sending us flowers. They are lovely and the poetry is quite nice too, but it's all just a bit overwhelming.

Helen K. Bond, Director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, School of Divinity (New College) University of Edinburgh has agreed to host a live and interactive viewing of our Dayton conference for folks in the UK who cannot make it to Dayton.

Good reading over at the NYT. My take, as simplistic as this might sound, is that religious ideologues (in general) confuse the truths that shape their collective identities for the symbols that point toward these truths. Of course, there must be a relationship between the symbol and the thing represented, so these must be overlapping fields. But, in the case of Jesus, we have been given multiple symbols for his person from the earliest Christian memories. Lord, Christ, Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God, Bread, Gate, Life, Lamb, High Priest, and the list goes on and on. We Christians should know better. Once this distinction is understood, we will be less scandalized by depictions of Jesus that don't look familiar to us.

Sidebar: Two entry points to the first person who can name the artist who created the imaged series of portraits above.

Over the next week, The Jesus Blog will be posting segments of my interview with Mark Goodacre. Our thanks to him for his time and insights.
-anthony

ACLD: For our upcoming conference on Jesus and "authenticity criteria" in Dayton, you'll be presenting a paper on the limits of the so-called Criterion of Multiple Attestation. You've also podcasted (can this be used as a verb?) a bit about this. As I understand it, you like this criterion in theory, but remain unconvinced of its practical use in Jesus studies. In your mind, is the problem with Multiple Attestation related to the relative lack of independent sources? Or is there a more foundational problem with the idea of itemizing ancient traditions as either "authentic" or "invented" categories?

MG: Thanks for the interesting questions, and renewed thanks for the invitation to participate both in the volume and in the conference. I enjoyed writing the essay because it gave me the chance to articulate some concerns that I have had for some time when teaching the "criteria" in Historical Jesus classes. My podcast on the topic came out of that teaching too, in the Spring 2012 version of the course. (Yes, I use "podcast" as a verb too).

I think everyone, on a general level, ought to like this criterion. After all, who would seriously claim to prefer late, singly attested traditions to early, multiply attested ones? But there are serious difficulties in practice, yes. And there are some fundamental problems too with what scholars are actually saying when they invoke the criterion.

I can perhaps summarize my concerns with the criterion under three basic headings. First, I am baffled by the fact that scholars can argue simultaneously that a given tradition is both "embarrassing" and "multiply attested". This appears self-contradictory and frankly ludicrous to me and it suggests that something is wrong somewhere. Second, many scholars work with an unrealistic idea of the independence of early source material -- you have all these Christian communities in isolation from one another producing their isolated sources from isolated traditions. I don't believe in the model. Third, it seems likely to me that early, reliable traditions are more likely to be singly attested than multiply attested. Did the historical Jesus ever spit? Well, he spits in Mark, one of our earliest sources, but he does not spit in Matthew or Luke (or Q, M, L or Thomas). Here, I think Mark may be right.

To be fair to those who work with the criteria, what many of them do is more nuanced than dividing things into piles labelled either "authentic" or "invented". Even the frequently mocked Jesus Seminar attempt to be more nuanced than that by (literally) pointing to shades of grey -- and pink. But where we do need to be careful is in the kind of drastic oversimplifying that we often do in historical Jesus work, a drastic oversimplifying that leads to all sorts of over-confident statements about historicity and non-historicity of particular traditions.

This essay helped me focus my own thoughts on the relationship between myth and memory in the Gospels. I do believe that this was presented in the Historical Jesus Section at SBL and I think that this is why I suspected that he might be interested in "historical" Jesus research.

Here is my summary of his contribution to our book from my intro chapter:

Mark will be presenting a synopsis of this at Dayton, OH, on Oct 4-5. Loren Stuckenbruck will offer a response.

This is a topic that interests me a great deal and (to my mind) should be on the radar of Jesus historians. Judging by the names involved in this conversation, this event promises to be a lively and frank conversation that includes an exploration of the many differences between sibling religions.

One of the highlights of our upcoming conference, for me, is going to be hearing Mark Goodacre critique the criterion
of multiple attestation. When Anthony
and I were putting together our list of contributors to the book and
conference, we thought Mark would be ideal for this chapter. For some reason that I now can’t remember, we
thought Mark was itching to jump into historical Jesus research more fully. We also knew that his substantial background
in the Synoptic Problem would position him very well to address this criterion,
which, like the Synoptic Problem, hinges on the relationship between
Gospels. To say that Mark delivered
would be an understatement. I think his
chapter will now be the go-to piece of research for discussing this criterion.

Mark gives us a little preview in a podcast
that he recorded earlier this year. You
can find it here. To get the full treatment, come to our conference and hear Mark in person.

Just in case you haven't had enough of this controversy, it seems that the editors at Harvard Theological Review have decided against publishing Karen King's essay on the so-called "Jesus' Wife" fragment. Our gratitude to Professor Evans who shared this via nearemmaus.com. Check it out here.

It has become commonplace in Gospels/Jesus studies to
point to the 30-60 year interval between the oral transmission of the
tradition(s) and its calcification in writing.
Many emphasize this interval in support of the fortuitous eye-witness
testimonies influential in the calcification process (e.g. Richard
Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006]); others emphasize this interval to
demonstrate the frailty of human memory (e.g. Judith C. S. Redman, “How Accurate
Are Eyewitnesses? Bauckham and the Eyewitnesses in the Light of
Psychological Research,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 1
[2010]: 177-97). While much has
been done in recent decades to contextualize this process within oral/aural
culture and media studies more generally, Robert K. McIver’s monograph is the
most comprehensive treatment to date on the cognitive psychology of memory and
how this relates to the Synoptic Gospels.

....

While many readers will demur from M.’s
optimistic conclusions regarding the “authenticity” of the Synoptics, the
brilliance of his study is found in the first four chapters. Indeed, the first third of this book outmodes
most previous appeals to the interval of memory between the crucifixion and the
writing of Mark. Henceforth, any work on
the Gospels that repeats the words “reliability,” “accuracy,” “credibility” or
“eye-witnesses,” but does not cite this book must be considered deficient.

Today I saw the latest P.T. Anderson film, “The Master.” One
of the best directed and acted movies I’ve ever seen. But I’ll admit that I love almost everything
he does (yes, even Punch-Drunk Love). The Master is a film inspired by the legacy of
L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the scientology movement. Here “inspired” means that the Philip Seymour
Hoffman’s character is a leader of a new religious movement, but his character
is not named “L. Ron Hubbard”. I am told, however, that there are many
parallels and that these are intentional parallels.

This is the second film wherein P.T. Anderson features a
religious charlatan. You might remember that “There Will Be Blood” featured a
charismatic, charlatan preacher played by Paul Dano. It makes one wonder why
this particular theme is important to him.
Whatever the reason, seeing this film reminded me of a thought
experiment I have employed a couple times for pedagogical purposes. When discussing the historical Jesus in Church
settings, I have posed this question: If
Jesus showed up today and started doing the sorts of things that Jesus (purportedly)
did in the Gospels, what would be your first impression? In other words, if a holy man wandered into town
and started casting out demons, and preaching politics, and healing via faith,
would you be intrigued or repelled?

Monday, September 24, 2012

1) Karen King reveals that a private collector (of ancient artifacts) contacted her in 2010 about a fragment of papyrus containing the phrase "my wife". According to the source, this fragment is from an ancient Coptic "Gospel", Jesus is the proposed speaker of the phrase, and the fragment is possibly dated to the fourth century CE.
2) This news is picked up by the New York Times, Huffington Post, etc. in September of 2012.
3) Media Scheiße-Sturm.
4) Some NT scholars voice caution or argue that it is a fraud.
5) Others remain optimistic.
6) The dust settles and we are left where we started.

So where are we again? Well in sum, we still have (A) a Christian public that remains insecure about matters related to Jesus and sexuality, (B) a media culture that needs a weekly religious or sexual scandal to remain interesting, and (C) a cultural symbol (Jesus) who is flexible enough for ideologues of all ilks to project whatever meaning they want to onto it.

ACLD: I'd like to ask you a question that I am asked
often. If a student wants to pursue a PhD and is specifically interested in Jesus research, where would you send them? Having completed your PhD at Durham and having taught at Edinburgh, you have experienced two of the best. Outside of those two institutions, what would you say would be the top two or three universities for Jesus research?

HKB: Well obviously I'd have to say Edinburgh! We have an
excellent and large body of staff who cover a wide range of specialisms, the
largest single site theological library in the UK, and (just as importantly in
my view) a strong sense of community. Our postgrad students usually finish on
time, too, and have a good track record of getting academic jobs afterwards.
But I know you said 'outside Edinburgh' . . .

A PhD in the UK is obviously rather different to one from the US, mainly
because we go straight into the thesis (there's no coursework). This perhaps
makes your supervisor all the more important, as that's the person who you'll
have most contact with. So I went to Durham because I wanted to work with Jimmy
Dunn, and then later to Tuebingen for a year because I wanted to work with
Martin Hengel. They were both great universities in general, but it was the
supervisor which was the main pull for me in both cases.

Its a bit hard to say where I'd advise people to go nowadays - many of the 'big
names' in Jesus scholarship are retired. Apart from Edinburgh (!), I might
suggest that people in the UK look at Tom Wright at St Andrews or James
Crossley at Sheffield (they’re very different scholars!). In the US, I'd go for
Dale Allison or Mark Goodacre. My sense, though, is that the days of the big
Jesus book are over, at least for now (who has time to read them all?!) - and
in any case that's not what's needed for a PhD. I'd advise people interested in
historical Jesus studies to do their PhD in something a little wider - second
Temple Judaism, Galilean archaeology, some aspect of the social or political
make up of Judaea in the first century etc. There are plenty of contested
issues still in Jesus scholarship, and choosing something related to one of
these would be a good way in. A thorough knowledge of one of those areas will
also prove more useful in assessing various portraits of Jesus than simply
diving into the literature and trying to decide between competing views. And if
we're widening out the lists of topics, then we'd want to include a much wider
group of universities and supervisors - over here, Durham, King's London,
Oxford and Cambridge would all be good places to look at.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

I was asked my my friend, Rev. Dan Melligan to write a guest post for his blog. My assigned topic was to bridge a sermon that I preached from Luke last week to a sermon series that Dan is preparing on the famous "I am" sayings in John. You can read it here.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

When Prof. Keith and I decided to assemble the roster for our upcoming conference, we wrote out our "dream team" list. The names on this list represented the best scholars associated with the particular topics that we wanted covered. This list included names like Loren Stuckenbruck, Dagmar Winter and Dale Allison; we were being overly optimistic. To our titillated glee, our final roster looked just like our initial "dream team"... with one exception - we had not contacted Jens Schroeter.

I told Chris over and over that Prof. Schroeter would be impossible to get. Not only is he a tremendously busy person, he does not often attend conferences in North America. But because we are both great admirers of his work, Chris decided to email him anyway.

Prof Schroeter is the first New Testament scholar to apply Social Memory theory to Jesus research. Chris and I are both convinced that scholars will look back on this generation and point to his work on Jesus as a decided shift in the intellectual history of research. Jens Schroeter is the reason why both of us learned to read German. In my case, Jimmy Dunn handed me an essay Schroeter wrote and said, "read this." Even though Jimmy was not fond of the direction (i.e. my direction) he knew that the essay was important.

So when Chris knocked on my office door to tell me that Prof. Schroeter would be coming to our conference we almost burst at the seams (well, I almost did; my seams are much more strained than Chris' seams). Here is my summary of Schroeter's chapter:

The conference related to our book, Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity is less than two weeks away (Oct 4-5). Chris and I are grateful to United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH and the University of Dayton for hosting this event.

C.S. Lewis, the posthumously canonized Pope of
Evangelicalism, wrote this concerning Jesus’ understanding of incorporeal
beings:

Some people would like to reject all such elements from Our
Lord’s teaching: and it might be argued that when he emptied himself of His
glory He also humbled Himself to share, as man, the current superstitions of
His time. And I certainly think that Christ, in the flesh, was not omniscient—if
only because the human brain could not, presumably, be the vehicle of
omniscient consciousness, and to say that Our Lord’s thinking was not really
conditioned by the size and shape of His brain might be to deny the real
incarnation and become a Docetist. Thus if Our Lord had committed Himself to
any scientific or historical statement which we knew to be untrue, this would
not disturb my faith in His Deity… (The Problem of Pain, pp137-138)*

As this blog should indicate, Anthony and I
both have vested interests in historical Jesus studies and their lively
future. We also share the fact that
those interests—to the best of our knowledge and intentions—are not apologetic
in nature. We, like many others, are
quite happy to come to conclusions that more conservative (whatever that means)
people might shy from if we believe the evidence leads us in that direction,
quite happy to publish those findings, and, in Anthony’s case, to be fired for
doing so (doubt he was that happy about that one though). Nevertheless, and highlighting the tragic
nature of what happened at our previous employer, Anthony and I are also both
confessional Christians, preach and teach in church, and I even hold
ordination. We also, then, have vested
interests in the Church and its relationship to scholarship. And we will find room for such discussions on
this blog, as the relationship between historical Jesus research and the Church
is indeed an aspect of historical Jesus research and always has been.

In that vein, one of the events that I’m
most looking forward to at the 2012 Jesus Conference in Dayton here in a couple
weeks is a roundtable discussion where we will discuss the contribution of Scot
McKnight to the book. Unfortunately,
Scot was not able to come to the conference.
But his essay is important in its suggestion that the “authentic Jesus,”
or even more broadly any Jesus that
historical Jesus research produces, is irrelevant for the Church and its
Jesus. This is, of course, not new, as
Martin Kähler argued along these lines famously. But Scot offers some new reasons for taking
this position.

There are, however, among our panelists,
several scholars who would argue the opposite—that the Jesus produced by
historical Jesus research is drastically important to the Church and how it
functions in society. Scot won’t be
there to respond unfortunately, but nevertheless the opportunity to hear Dale
Allison, Dagmar Winter, Mark Goodacre, Rafael Rodríguez, Jens Schröter, and
others weigh in on this topic should be fantastic! Of course, this will be one of several topics
discussed, but I’m looking forward to this one.

ACLD: Walter Wink, who we recently lost, was quite convinced that
Jesus’ famous “turn the other cheek” saying was meant to shame a violent
oppressor into acknowledging an equal relationship with the person being
struck. In this view, Jesus was not advocating passivity to abused people. So
too with the “go the extra mile” saying. Do you think Wink was reading too much
into these symbolic actions?

HKB: Who said anything about being passive? I don’t think that
proclaiming God’s imminent rule and the need to prepare for it is passive in
any way. Its demandingly active, hugely political, and massively
counter-cultural and threatening to those in authority. So I think that Wink is
right that these sayings of Jesus have the ability to shame oppressors (if they
took the time to notice), but I would be wary of restricting these sayings to
Rome/political authorities. While the ‘go the extra mile’ saying may have
originated in the context of Roman auxiliary troops, the ‘offer the other
cheek’ saying would fit in any uneven situation – from feuds between rival
families to violence in the home. Again, I think its human relationships on a
more basic level that Jesus is talking about.

ACLD: One of the key points made by anti-Empire
folks, is that the title “Son of God” (as applied to Jesus) is in direct
opposition to Caesar Augustus’ title. In
other words, Caesar isn’t the son of God, Jesus is. Is this not the best
reading of this title?

Yesterday my "Portraits of Jesus" class spent some time with Prof. DeConick's blog. With so many of us chiming in with knee-jerk takes on the Jesus' wife fragment, it is good to remember that we can lean on experts like April.

Okay, so I cheated. I suggested to Chris that we'd both choose five books and then I chose seven. I just couldn't leave any one of these out. But, for those keeping score at home, my list is better than his by two. Here are my votes in alphabetical order:

James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle

Required reading for most PhD programs and rightly so. It was difficult not to include Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism here; that book certainly represents a sea change in New Testament studies. But if I had to recommend only one of these "new perspective" books, I'd recommend Dunn's opus. The Theology of Paul the Apostle set the standard by which all books on Paul would be measured (and still are). Also, he writes job letters for me, so I have to say nice things.

Craig A. Evans, Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies

This book was formerly titled Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation. The more recent version is worth the additional purchase. Ever get mixed up on the difference between the Talmud and the Targums? Fearful of sticking more than a toe into the waters of Dead Sea Scrolls research? And what's the date on the Shepherd of Hermas again? This book is the best introduction of the vast sea that is Second Temple (and thereabouts) Jewish (and contemporary) literature. But the real reason that you want this book is for the scriptural, cross-listing index. Evans lists hundreds of parallels between the New Testament and contemporary literature - of course, it is up to the reader to decide how to use such parallels.

Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus
Modern biblical studies is rooted in German Protestantism. So many of our default positions come from a time and place that is now quite alien to us (I speak here as an American who was educated in Canada and the UK). Heschel's book is a brilliant introduction to these default positions. Time will tell whether her book becomes a standard classroom text, but it should.

E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism

I don't go in much for "Quest" demarcations, but it cannot be denied that Sanders led the charge on the most productive era of Jesus research in history. Honorable mention goes to Geza Vermes for his Jesus the Jew. Who wouldn't want to read what Sanders, the greatest living New Testament scholar, has to say about Jesus?

Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Much like Bultmann (see Chris' list), Schweitzer's voice still sets the tone for the choir. Although we've nuanced his Quest paradigm a great deal, it is still his work that provides the basis for the field.

Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent
Best and most comprehensive book on the parables ever written. And I remain a big fan of Jeremais' masterful treatment. You simply will not have access to the earliest memories of Jesus unless you understand how the parables work. Snodgrass' book might provide the best window into this seminal thoughtworld.

N.T. Wright, New Testament and the People of God
This book (remarkably) has been overshadowed by his Jesus and the Victory of God. I almost wish that the second of these was never written. NTPG, when measured on its own, is epochal. Even if one disagrees with the overarching program, this book has generated more talking points in our field than any other in the past fifty years.

Writing the phrase "Jesus had a wife!" is roughly equivalent to writing the phrase "Jesus had a penis!" Both phrases immediately suggest that Jesus had a sexual identity. Contextualized within a history of Christian culture that has been fearful of sexuality, you can create a nice little scandal with such information. For the record, I am not under the impression that most Christians (whatever that means - Xty is the most culturally diverse organized religion on the planet) are repressed puritans. But for a whole host of reasons most Christians like their Jesus to be asexual. Which, to me, is much more weird than a Jesus who had a normal human identity.

Look, I don't know if this thing is a forgery, or if it's an interesting window into what some folks believed about Jesus post-300. I'm not even sure which of these options would be more interesting. What I am sure about is that this a very old story dressed up in a new foreskin. The Jesus that we'd like to worship just isn't the Jesus that we find in our best historical reconstructions. If taken serious, more Christians should be scandalized that Jesus was circumcised on the eight day. But the fact that Jesus was Jewish has become commonplace. I suppose that a story about Jesus' fictional wife is a good reminder that he is deceptively familiar; there is so much about him that has been obscured by our overexposure to him.

Since St. Mary's is now officially claiming association, I now officially congratulate Chris. Much deserved, my friend! I know very few folks who have worked more diligently in such a short period of time.

This list reflects my interests in scribal
culture, historical Jesus studies, and memory.
I have to stress that it’s not a list of the five best books in NT
studies, but the five books that I would recommend to a potential PhD student
in these fields.

H. Gregory Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World

My Doktorvater,
Larry Hurtado, likes to cite Harry Gamble’s Books
and Readers in the Early Church as a necessary read for any PhD
student. He’s right, but before Gamble I
read Snyder’s study of texts and textuality, a revised version of his Yale PhD
dissertation. It changed entirely the
way that I thought about the transmission of texts and, especially, the social
and power structures that surround those texts in early Christianity.

Dale Allison, Constructing Jesus

Allison’s most recent tome is rightly
considered a game-changer. Perhaps the
most important contribution is to methodology.
Allison is done with atomistic approaches to the gospel tradition. Instead, his approach is to account for large
patterns in the tradition. I think this
is going to be the way of the future in critical Jesus studies.

Rudolf Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition

This book’s presence on the list might
surprise some people since I’ve spent considerable time and effort combating
form criticism in some publications. But
it’s that effort that makes me appreciate all the more what Rudolf Bultmann
accomplished. He’s the greatest NT
scholar of the 20th century for a reason, and this book lies at the
core foundation of his entire project. History of the Synoptic Tradition set
the course for Gospels studies for decades because it shaped what an entire
generation of critical scholars understood the Gospels to be. Its presence is still felt today.

Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels

Anthony is working on a book where he
argues that historical Jesus studies really starts with Josephus. I’m open to that idea, but until he convinces
me, as far as I’m concerned, it starts with Augustine’s Harmony of the Gospels. At
times, he’s making precisely the type of moves that later historical Jesus
scholars present as novel and original.

Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament,
1861–1986

This book is where NT Wright first calls
the Third Quest the Third Quest.
Scholarly attention to that little nugget often overshadows the
brilliant (and interesting!) description of New Testament studies by Stephen
Neill. It’s succinct, and the just the
type of overview that someone entering the field needs, if nothing else to
explain to others what in the world you do (or are going to do) with all your
time.

Tomorrow Professor Keith and I will weigh in on the topic of most important books in New Testament studies. These books will not be the "top ten" books that every New Testament student should own. A list like that would include a Bible (e.g. The Access Bible), a biblical Pseudepigrapha, and a collection of commentaries (if you're starting from scratch, perhaps this). Our list will suggest the "next ten" books and thus we will assume that our readers have a few books on their shelves already. And, no, we will not be suggesting any titles with our names on the cover.

ACLD: Do you think that there is such a thing as
too much empathy in the task of historical reconstruction? No doubt, we cannot help but project a bit of
ourselves onto interesting historical figures, but this can’t always be a good
thing.

HKB: You’re certainly right about the pitfalls of self-projection
– and this has been the scourge of historical Jesus scholarship since it all
began. Scholars now tend to be more open about their own preconceptions and
agenda, but we need to be continually asking ourselves to defend our own
decisions. Have I chosen x, y and z on good historical grounds, or because
that’s the kind of Jesus I want to see? A Jesus who holds my own views? It’s
often very hard to differentiate between the two, but we need to be continually
on our guard.

ACLD: In your discussion of the political
backdrop for the careers of John the Baptist and Jesus, you say that while
there is little evidence of uprisings during the 20’s, “tension was clearly
brewing beneath the surface” (Bond, p.60). Very few historians would disagree
with you on this point. In fact, it has become quite commonplace for North
American and British scholars to talk about Jesus’ subversive stance against
the Roman Empire. Do you think our interest in defining Jesus against “empire”
tells us something about our own historiographical needs and/or motives?

HKB: Yes, quite definitely! I have the impression its actually
much more common in the US than in the UK, and I think there's a good reason
for that - probably all bound up with US angst about its own imperialism. The
'Jesus against Empire' seems to me to be an attempt to find a useful liberal
Jesus for modern US Christians (Marcus Borg pretty much says as much in his latest
book on Jesus). There's nothing wrong with wanting a useable Jesus, but he
shouldn't be confused with the Jesus of history.

I actually think there's very little in the gospels that suggests that Jesus
was 'anti-Empire' or specifically anti-Rome. Like most Jews, he probably saw
history as a succession of Empires, all under God's control, and hoped that one
day God himself would reign from Jerusalem. What set him apart from others was
his overriding sense that God was coming to reign soon - in other words, his
apocalypticism. I'm not saying that most people liked Roman rule, but apart
from Hasmonaean times, it was how things had been pretty much since the exile.
Josephus tells us that there were plenty of clashes between Jews and Romans,
but most of these are in the 50s and 60s, when the Judaean governors seem to
have had little ability (or perhaps interest) in arbitrating between the
competing ethnic groups within the tiny province. It may not be very ‘cool,’
but I think Jesus was probably far more interested in human relationships
between one another and God than in an empire that ruled though God's favour
and was about to be swept away in the near future . . .

From the beginning, I envisioned this as a good classroom text for courses on Jesus and courses on World Religions. Half of the chapters are written by prominent Jewish scholars and half are written by Christian scholars. All of us write with an eye toward contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. The idea here, and I admit that I think it is a good one, is to talk about Jesus and the "Religion of Jesus" (i.e. Judaism and/or Christianity, depending on your perspective) with unabashed religious commitments. So rather than hiding behind the veil of "objectivity" and leaving the reader to guess what agenda might be at work, this book is a step toward honest and responsible subjectivity. But because there are multiple traditions represented (Reform, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, etc) and multiple regions represented (Canada, Germany, Israel, UK, USA, etc) this book provides several and varied portraits of Jesus.

Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, each chapter demonstrates concern for the well-being of the perceived "other" in inter-religious dialogue. The tone of the book is not sectarian in the "us vs. them" sense of that word.
...more...

ACLD: Helen, thank you for sharing some of your sabbatical
time with me. I should tell you straightaway that I've assigned your
introduction of The Historical
Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed for my "Portraits of
Jesus" class. Some of these students might be chiming in below with
comments.

HKB: Thanks, Anthony, it’s lovely to talk to you - and I'm
very glad to hear you're using my book with your class. It came out of a
3rd-4th year class on the historical Jesus that I've run for over a decade at
Edinburgh, so I hope it helps to answer some of the things that students find
difficult or just plain bizarre about Jesus scholarship. And I look forward to
questions from your students!

ACLD: On the first pages of your book, you make a compelling case that
reconstructing history is a necessarily imaginative endeavor. As
a historian, do you see this as a problem to be solved, something to
be embraced, or something else?

HKB: Definitely something to be embraced. As historians we
need to be systematic about the way we do things - we have a few general rules
and guides to help us - but we're misleading ourselves if we ever think that
what we do can be described as 'scientific'. Especially with ancient history,
we're continually having to live with a heavy load of uncertainty in all our
findings. Sometimes a reconstruction might look plausible on a piece of paper,
but we have to use imagination to ask ourselves what any given scenario might
have felt like in real life - how would people have functioned in this way? is
it really credible? And imagination is the only way I can think of that helps
to neutralise our heavily interpreted primary sources - not to mention our own
modern bias. Sometimes historical work seems like a very slippery endeavour -
but it’s the complexities of it all that makes it so absorbing!

Friday, September 14, 2012

In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza argued that
Scripture (he meant both Hebrew Bible and Christian Writings) was made up of
two kinds of writing: history and revelation. Revelation was a very subjective
thing, according to Spinoza, always reflecting the opinions and personalities of
the prophets. History, on the other hand, was more apt to be without such
biases. He considered the Gospels to be in the “history” category with a few
caveats.

Occasionally, the Gospels might tell us more about the
epistemological limitations of the perceivers of events. Within Spinoza’s program of substance monism
of divine character, the “supernatural” was not possible. This is not to say that remarkable events did
not occur, but they were not super. To the naïve ancient minds (still following
Spinoza’s line here) certain remarkable natural events were attributed to the
supernatural. Along these lines, demons did not exist.

Perhaps telling of the philosopher’s opinions, Spinoza’s
Jesus was not hindered by premodern naiveté. When Jesus spoke of “demons” he
was simply speaking in terms that would be understood by his naïve, premodern
disciples. At first glance, I wondered whether this view of Jesus might betray
a high Christology—Spinoza wouldn’t be the first “heretic” to be inconsistent.
But, better considered, Spinoza’s Jesus isn’t especially triune so much as he
is a prototype of the modern human. For Spinoza, Jesus was anachronistically
enlightened.

In this way our excommunicated Jewish friend is not much
different than the modern Evangelical. Elsewhere I have claimed that Spinoza is
the first modern historical Jesus scholar. If this is true, it should come as
no surprise that modern Evangelicals (even those with anti-modern tendencies)
betray particular affinity here. The
standard Evangelical view is that Jesus carried all of the mysteries of the
universe in his noggin.

My most recent employer was a small, Christian, liberal arts
institution, not unlike many others in the U.S. and Canada. At such
institutions, every subject matter must incorporate some curricular reference
to Jesus. The judicious classroom expert will quote Augustine on the subject of
Truth and leave it at that. But reflecting the variance of Evangelical
perspectives in this particular institution, one student mused, “In professor
X’s classroom, Jesus knew all of the intricacies of astrophysics; but in
professor Y’s classroom, Jesus didn’t even know how to read.”

Did Jesus carry all of the mysteries of the universe in his
noggin? The historical Jesus scholar must answer no. There are three reasons
why this must be and these answers create overlapping spheres relating the interests of the historian, theologian, and Evangelical.

(1) Jesus was a fully contextualized human living in a
particular time and place. Hence language, education, bias, etc. apply as such.

...a weblog dedicated to historical Jesus research and New Testament studies

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Le Donne, Keith, Pitre, Crossley, Jacobi, Rodríguez

James Crossley (PhD, Nottingham) is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London. In addition to most things historical Jesus, his interests typically concern Jewish law and the Gospels, the social history of biblical scholarship, and the reception of the Bible in contemporary politics and culture. He is co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Christine Jacobi studied protestant theology and art history in Berlin and Heidelberg. She is research associate at the chair of exegesis and theology of the New Testament and apocryphal writings. She completed her dissertation at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2014. She is the author of Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus? Analogien zwischen den echten Paulusbriefen und den synoptischen Evangelien (BZNW 213), Berlin: de Gruyter 2015. Christine Jacobi is a member of the „August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum“ and the „Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften“.

Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is Associate Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary. He is the author/editor of seven books. He is the co-founder of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and the co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Among other works, he is the author of Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Mohr-Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2005), and Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015). He is particularly interested in the relationship between Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins.

Rafael Rodríguez (PhD, Sheffield) is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University. He has published a number of books and essays on social memory theory, oral tradition, the Jesus tradition, and the historical Jesus, as well as on Paul and Pauline tradition. He also serves as co-chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

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Jesus and the Last Supper

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Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text